


The Luck of a Stranger

by remi_wolf



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Brian's alone, Fort Galfridian, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Immolation, Original Character(s), Stranger - Freeform, burning at the stake, vague allusions to romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25581061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: Brian should know better than to try to venture on his own. There is a reason the Mechanisms tend to remain close together to create or tell stories. When he tries to stay alone, without creating stories, without needing to tell stories, he finds himself creating a story and witnessing one much larger than he would have ever wanted to happen, especially alone on an over-ambitious space station.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions





	The Luck of a Stranger

It wasn’t even supposed to be that busy of a planet. It was sleepy, quiet, with barely any space travel to speak of. He should have been able to exist quietly here for years or decades while Jonny and Ashes and everyone else played their ridiculous little game to break as many laws as possible before disappearing into the solar winds. Him, he just wanted to exist quietly on a planet that felt vaguely familiar in a dream-like sort of way, and didn’t have many people that would look too closely at a man trying to raise some sheep because he liked the act of shearing them and spinning their wool. 

He should have known his luck. 

He should have known that he couldn’t let himself have friends other than the ones he had spent millennia with because they were forced to. 

He didn’t even know what had gone wrong. He was spinning, and weaving bandages for the local hospital, making sure that they were the finest he could manage, just to turn and see the man he had been living with—falling for—staring at him in horror. It didn’t take a millennia-old doctor such as himself to realize how unnatural his form was with brass plates instead of skin, and it certainly didn’t take an immortal space pirate to realize that the quick one-liners he borrowed from Jonny wouldn’t be enough to explain things away here. 

“Please, I can explain, Jules!”

“Get away from me! Demon!”

That stopped Brian short as he stared at Jules, wondering where he had gotten such an idea, how he had thought of that, when he hadn’t realized that Jules was in any way suspicious. But Jules was still trying to pull away, still panicking about the sight he had seen.

“Jules, please! I’m not a demon, you know me. I’m trying to help people. A demon wouldn’t do something like that.”

Jules didn’t seem to care or even hear his words, pulling away from Brian’s brass grip and running away. Brian stood there, still in shock, before looking back at the little room he had created here. His loom off to one side, a simple bed tucked into the corner that he pretended to use despite Jules’ consistent offers to join him, and the few boxed instruments tucked away in a corner, gathering dust. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone so poorly if he hadn’t have ignored them like he wanted to.

It took longer than he had expected for the party to come. He didn’t even know who would come to gather a so-called demon away. He didn’t even know if there was an actual church here anymore after the last religious wars died out in a fizzle centuries before he had landed on the planet with the rest of the crew. He didn’t fight as the judge and the mayor dragged him up and out of the room. He didn’t argue as their wives slung insults and screamed at him as they dragged him through the town. 

He didn’t even argue when he started hearing the cries of “heretic” ring out throughout the city as his shirt was cut away, revealing the etched brass skin of his torso. He couldn’t argue. He might not remember much of his old life, but the identity of being a heretic was etched into every fiber of his being, even more clearly than his name etched upon his chest for the whole world to see and his utterly inhuman status. 

Honestly, he was mostly curious about how he’d be sentenced to death this time. Would they try fire? He hadn’t been burned to death in a long time. Perhaps it would be getting drawn and quartered. Something in him shuddered at the idea of being thrown into space and executed that way, and he knew he should remember that, but his memory circuits were even worse than Ivy’s at times. 

“Kill the heretic!”

Did they have nothing better to scream at him? He took a shuddering breath, barely even noticing as he began to get hoisted up, tied to a tall pole. So...hanging, perhaps? He wasn’t entirely sure at all what they intended to do by this. It was odd, though, the way that they were hanging him. He could see the pings of damage at his ankle pop into his vision, and he grimaced slightly as they continued to pull him up by the rope on his ankles. 

“I don’t think this will kill me..." He frowned as he looked up at his feet, glad at least that his trousers had stayed on, and he dropped his head back to the ground, focusing on the quiet of his mechanical ticks instead of the growing crowd around him. They made it difficult, though, screaming as they were.

“This demon is trying to get us to spare its life! We won’t stand for this!”

Brian sighed, closing his eyes to the rest of whatever sermon was starting to get preached to the crowd. He wanted them to get over it. Just kill him so he could move on with his life. He only opened his eyes when he heard the sound of wood being dropped around him. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard wood here, and he opened his eyes in time to see them building a pyre around his hung form. He didn’t like this, not at all. While he knew it wouldn’t hurt—motors would melt, springs would snap, strings warp, but the only thing that would come close to pain would be the overloaded sensors embedded in every inch of his body—he was concerned about the resources that they were expending to execute him in such a spectacular fashion. 

The pyre and the fire, though, didn’t take long to build. Somehow, despite the fact that he hadn’t really seen any wood on this planet, they had enough gathered to begin the fire. It meant another sermon about the horrors of demons and false friends and the idea of anything unnatural, but Brian tuned it out as he kept his eyes on Jules, watching his unmoving face lit by torch, and he kept his eyes on Jules even as the man he had once called his friend lit the pyre underneath him. 

The fire lit, and immediately began licking up his body, devouring the wood and raging, even as his body turned soft and slowly dripped onto the rust-covered ground beneath the pole he was tied to.


End file.
